A woman is found floating in the river and
hardcore detective Jack Verdon (Ray Liotta) is
called to the scene. Actually, his partner Jenny
(Sarah Ann Schultz) fetches Jack from the
restaurant his wife Ana (Giselle Fraga) works at.
Jenny is wearing a 1960’s styled mini-outfit with
white go-go boots and her boobies are pushed up to
just beneath her chin. Jenny informs us that she
was supposed to be going to one of those
‘throwback’ parties, and this is why she is
walking around looking this. Jenny will proceed to
go to the crime scene like this, and then back to
the precinct dressed like this. At some point
Jenny probably should’ve changed clothes. If I
were actress Sarah Ann Schultz, I would’ve
complained. Nonetheless, this victim is familiar
to these officers since she works in the D.A.’s
office, but she’s really familiar to Jack since he
used to do her. Damn if they didn’t find this poor
woman at the last place that these two got down,
right by the river. Jack likes to have sex
outdoors by the river for some reason. Detective
Jack points this out to his boss Captain Langley
(Ving Rhames), and rightfully so, that this makes
him suspect. Imagine what Jack’s boss is going to
say when the next woman turns up dead in the
river, and that Jack had sex with her too. And the
next one. This is probably why they called this
movie ‘The River Murders’ though I probably
would’ve opted for a less descriptive, more
exploitative title to be honest with you that had
the word ‘sex’ and some conjugation of the word
‘death’ somewhere.

Clearly we have a mystery on our hands. Kind of.
It’s a mystery for the characters in our movie,
but not for us because we know full well whose
killing these people because it’s that guy right
there (Michael Rodrick), though we’ll have to wait
a minute to find out why he’s killing Jack’s
lovely liaisons, and jamming stuff up in their
private parts, post mortem. So vile are these
crimes that the FBI, in the form surly agent
Vukovitch (Christian Slater) had to be called in,
and his first order of business is for Jack to
generate a list of every woman he’s ever slept
with, since all of them are in danger. Well, Jack
was nothing if not prolific. Believe that. Chances
are if you are a female and lived wherever this
movie takes place, you and your mom had sex with
Jack Verdon. In addition to these murders, Jack’s
mother recently passed away, we assume by accident
and not by serial killing, his wife had no idea
that her husband was such a studly lothario and is
none too happy about it, putting the bitchy wife
meter on level ten, plus she’s a potential victim,
and even though Jack gave Agent Vucovitch his
massive list, there is one name conveniently left
off of it. But the bad guy knows who it is, yes he
does.

So why is this guy doing these things? Well of
course we can’t divulge that information but it
has something to do with Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, I
just can’t figure out which angle this movie is
shooting from.

Director Rich Cowan’s little Straight to DVD
serial killing thriller isn’t getting a lot of
love out there, but I actually kind of liked it.
True enough, the core of the narrative isn’t all
that fresh or original… what is nowadays… and the
police procedurals supporting the movie are also
standard movie fare, which means the cops
investigating these crimes are grossly
incompetent, but the sleazy, exploitative nature
of the story did make it more interesting to
watch. In fact, I’m of the opinion that if the
director had shelved all pretense of class and
perceived good taste, and allowed this film to
travel down the sleazy path it seemed destined
for, then we would’ve had a way more interesting
movie. Since far too many of these film exist in a
sea of sameness, today’s films and their
filmmakers need to do something to separate their
movies to attract more eyeballs, and ‘The River
Murders’ had the potential to do this. For full
disclosures sake, I have been watching a lot of
80’s era Italian exploitation films lately which
execute this simple plan quite beautifully, but
despite the sleazy nature of the story, ‘The River
Murders’ plays it relatively safe.

That being said, the movie isn’t without value.
The rainy, dreary conditions and muted colors add
to the oppressive atmosphere that exists in the
movie, and while there was no mystery to follow as
far as this movie being a ‘whodunit’, the gradual
dissemination of information throughout the movie
in regards to our killer was an effective device
in keeping the viewer interested.

As far as performances go, Ray Liotta apparently
stopped ‘acting’ years ago and from what I’ve
seen, just brings a stock character to the
numerous roles he accepts. This is neither a good
thing nor a bad thing, just Ray being Ray.
Christian Slater did liven things up considerably
with his completely inappropriate FBI agent, but
Michael Rodrick’s serial killer was a curiosity.
The fact that his character was so clean cut and
polite took some of the edge off of his crazy. The
problem this presents is that what he was doing
was so illogical and nutty, but his character
never came off as either illogical or nutty. How
did that guy get from here to there?

Regardless, that’s over thinking it, which is
something that you really don’t need to do with
‘The River Murders’. I do think this was a
passable serial killer flick with a suitably
sleazy story to support it, but it ended up being
more ‘run of the mill’ than it had to be, when it
had the potential to be a little more than that.
Or less, depending on your opinion of sleaze.